


Filter

by orphan_account



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, case of nanaki compliant, grief and emotional proccessing, ish mostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 08:39:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7632967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AVALANCHE reunites every couple of years. Nanaki has missed some of the reunions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Larissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larissa/gifts).



In the store room, small hands that had once weaved ribbons in his mane, strong now. Prying open crates that had once been as big as she was, in the back room.

It isn't her job. She's grown. She's just visiting, being helpful.

Behind the bar, another pair, strong hands that had once shattered rock and bone, bent metal fighting at his side, cautious now. Hesitating at a bottle, gauging weight. It's a motion he's used to, almost. She had more than once broken a bottle setting it down in too much excitement.

The movement is similar, but that's not her worry now.

 

_He does not cower anymore, when Gilligan comes calling. When the dark thing clenches inside him, rolls under his skin. He does not tremble and fall, paralyzed by the fear._

_These days, he runs._

 

Ten years since his last proper visit. Ten years filling his eyes and his memory with things so much larger than conversation, or tones of voice, or familiar smiles.

He had not thought he had been gone so long.

Photos behind the bar, pinned to the boards with shot glasses turned down before them. Two rows, Face over face. Glass over glass. When had they grown so many? He remembered hearing of each of them; had felt some more than others. He had not understood the presence of a few: the face if a one-time enemy, a handful of smiles he barely knew, not theirs, not his friends, but theirs.

"How is Cloud?"

"Still making his deliveries. Does that tell you anything?" Tifa's laugh is light still, holds none of the age her hands now do. It throws him back to roaming campfire days. Does he like this? He doesn't know.

 

_Moving forward is better than moving nowhere, even without purpose. It must be; he's sworn to see the world, after all, and one cannot see much of anything standing still._

_He runs and he runs and he is just fast enough, just exhausted enough, that the fear never quite catches him, and he never quite has to feel it. And why would he, when he can feel, when he can feel -_

_Dust in his fur, kicking up little windblown bursts dry and hot in his nose and on his tongue, little rocks sliding beneath his paws and sun, sun, sun. His own muscles aching. His own lungs burning. Moving as fast as he can with a stride that's still steady, darting around rocks too big to leap and leaping gaps and ridges in the earth too big to dodge._

_The air, cleaner than the last time he was here. Cleaner than the day they struck out into the wastelands, less than half-certain of their next move. Fleeing death then too, yes, but not that of anyone he cared about._

 

The last time he had seen her she had been forty, and showing little enough of it. The her of his memory was twenty-something still. Thirty-something. Years that bled together, unimportant because her strength remained.

It doesn't seem quite right to now. To like it. To not like it. Who is he to summon Tifa-past when Tifa present stands before him, pouring water from a bottle that isn't quite steady, with a smile that is?

"I suppose it does tell me something. It tells me that he works to hard. Should he not spend more time here?"

"Oh, Cloud. He is who he is, you know? He doesn't care about time. I wouldn't either, if had his job, and his bike."

"Perhaps he should."

"Come now, Nanaki...I was just-"

"As was I." Only he wasn't. Only the years etched into his friend’s face did not match what he remembered, and the urge to outrun stillness began to wake beneath his skin.

It has been ten years, since he has seen Cloud face to face.

Behind them, there is a ringing pop as nails and wood separate.

"Got it!" Marlene, at least, almost sounds the same. "How many bottles did you need, Tifa?"

"Bottom shelf only. We're doing alright."

"That...Tifa, that doesn't sound alright to me?"

"It's doing alright if I say so, dear. Especially when it's the second time we've restocked that shelf this week."

The bar itself has changed, Nanaki notes. It had still been metal and glass and gray, the last time he had visited. It’s warmer now.

The bar is topped with wood and not metal. The windows are wider. The walls are no longer bare. Does he like this?

He doesn't know.

"Allow me to help," He offers Marlene, after she brings out the first two bottles, and struggles a little in fitting them with spouts. "I've nothing better to do after all, have I?"

He had run first, with the first overturned shotglass. The first photo pinned up behind the bar. It was far from his first encounter with death but-

A brand of cigarette he had known by smell from experience, by name from guessing. A dialect he had heard in only one town, his worldly travels over. A hunk of metal in Rocket Town that had not and would never fly. A face familiar but not friendly, who asked them not to grieve.

But his friend, his friend.

Nanaki had run then, two days before Cid's funeral.

“I'm really glad you came.” Marlene, quietly, catching him on her next trip to the storeroom, and taking the bottles he passes to her. “We didn't manage to get anyone together last time, and Cloud and Yuffie really missed you the one before that.”

“I as well.” He nods, nudging the top off of an already-open crate for her. “I missed them too.”

He isn't sure which one of them this unspoken thing in the air, the possibility that two years from now there may be another photo behind the bar, belongs to.

They quiet then. She takes bottles into the bar proper and smiles when he has more lined up waiting when she ducks back in. It's just like the last time, and the time before that, and that, and that. It surprises him a little, that she's taller than his shoulder now, that she doesn't need to push and climb and crawl around him and over boxes to get at what she needs. That he isn't sure what to say to her, now that she is older than him.

 

_Doesn't have to feel it when he can see sky, and sky, and sky. Actual blue now, behind white-puffed clouds instead of gray-green low-hung smog. Thirty years and already he has seen the world change so. He and his friends, he reminds himself, they've done that. And this is something that he must keep seeing, and must remember._

_The others, save Vincent, will not be able to._

_He’s not afraid of that anymore._

_He hits the edge of wasteland and realizes he has no idea how long he has been running. Empty sand turning to shrub turning to low dry grass and rough, short flowers whose names he's yet to learn. And he burns and he burns. And he slows and he slows. But the dark thing is far behind him, and he has no more need to give it the attention of it's name._

_Naming them helps him understand his fears, contain them._

_He doesn't have a name yet for what he is instead._

 

The door opens quietly, chime airy and Marlene rushes out to meet Cloud, Nanaki on her heels.

The Cloud the door swings closed behind looks tired. Nanaki stops up short. Marlene doesn't.

Cloud's fumbling with his PHS like he's not any more a fan of these touch screen ones than Nanaki is, and barely gets it in his pocket before he has an armful of Marlene. Sways slightly at the force of the hug and casts his eyes from her to Tifa. “I'm sorry, that was Barrett. He's not feeling well enough to make the trip.”

Marlene does nothing to hide her frown, and she doesn't hang on to Cloud for long.

“That means he really tried, then...”

A beat of quiet.

“We can call him,” Tifa offers. “Everyone should be here soon.”

Cloud looks tired. But he looks happy, too, in his way. Not happy at the news, but happy like his whole being has finally found somewhere to settle. Smile small but constant and a helmet balanced at his hip. When did he start wearing one? It’s better, probably.

“Red.” A nod, and only then, at Cloud's out-held hand, does Nanaki approach.

“Glad to see you well.”

“Glad to see you at all, my friend.”

“Cloud -”

The doors bang open, chime startled.

“Alright!

Forty-six and she doesn't forget to run her fingers through his mane, catching and tugging playfully on a feathered pin as she strides in. Like sixteen, twenty six, thirty.

“Betcha all were waiting on me, right! Well, wait no more! Yuffie is here!” She doesn't stop to hug Cloud, just hugs him and keeps on going, drops herself into a bar stool and her elbows onto the bar and gives a groan of exasperation with her whole body. “Man, you guys don't even know. The cabinet knows I'm coming here, and they know exactly when I'm coming for the next two decades. I scheduled it into the calendars myself every. Single. Time. They're supposed to be helping me run the country; you'd think two years would be plenty of time to prepare.”

“Is that how you announce all of your arrivals?” Tifa laughing. “Political news in Wutai must be much more fun to watch.” Yuffie, playing up a pout.

“You know that's not true. Just because I've learned to behave myself on camera, and at a podium, does not mean I have to around you.” But there's no real sharpness to her voice these days.

“No one said we wanted you to.” Cloud at her shoulder, smiling brighter, just a little. He doesn't take that seat next to her, but he leans on the bar.

“Good.” No venom in it, even the friendly kind.

Vincent may arrive, or he may not. There are no other faces left to wait for.

Nanaki loses the conversation there.

He knows little of recent affairs of state.


End file.
